Do you think German philosopher and sociologist Theodor W. Adorno, if he were alive today, would say, "Writing poetry after Gaza is barbarism"?
Of course, we cannot say what a deceased person would or would not do today; but for those who know how Emmanuel Levinas turned a blind eye to the Sabra and Shatila massacres, such hypotheticals are pointless.
We cannot know what Adorno would do; but one must be blind not to see that the narrative of the intellectual being impartial and universal, which has often cracked in the past, has completely collapsed today, disappearing under the ruins of Gaza, which was destroyed by tens of thousands of tons of bombs by Israel. Intellectuals vanished in the Israeli bombardment, just like politicians.
"I think of Jewish consciousness as a state of alertness that is always on guard due to the ages of savagery, sometimes showing a special interest in what is within the human being," Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, once said.
Emmanuel Levinas seems so convinced when he says this nonsense. The French philosopher has no doubt about himself when he talks about responsibility and how innocence is only possible with responsibility. In Levinas' eyes, the Holocaust and the 2,000 years of persecution that preceded it had brought the Jews to the purest state that humanity could attain.
When Levinas was uttering these words that seem like barbarism to us today, he truly believed in what he was saying. I won't mention any names, because they're not worth it; none of them are worth a damn. But today, there are Turkish intellectuals who write in Turkish, alienated and believing in the silence of millions of Palestinians, thinking they can get away with it out of fear of the Israeli lobby, American funds, the PEN Writers Association and their Israeli friends. And that they can maintain their fair, innocent, impartial, universal intellectual persona. At the end of the day, Israel will either defeat or not defeat Hamas; the "international community," led by the U.S., will draw a conceptual and physical boundary line on the issue, and the aforementioned type of person, whose main job is to shout about child abuse in Quran courses, political prisoners from their own neighborhoods and the foolish actions of this or that bureaucrat, will find something to say.
What can one say? A Turkish proverb says, "Pierce others with the needle, but pierce yourself with the pin."
It has never been a subject that I have kept silent about just because it suited me. I have always spoken out about what I believed to be true. So, in reality, I am that universalist, humanist, modern, democratic and autonomous intellectual who expresses ideas and acts freely with my own free will. We, Muslims who are thousands of times more numerous than those individuals and organizations that serve as cultural agents of the West in Türkiye, are accustomed to speaking responsibly about issues within the framework of East or West, Islam or secularism, and tradition or modernity. We are people who would make any philosopher who played a role in the construction of humanism, tolerance, democracy, free will, and so on, proud. We have been raised as both Muslims and modern individuals. There is no group of people in the world that we are not sensitive to. But that doesn't matter anymore. What can we say?
I'm still holding the same stance here. My life is built on it. I apologize for saying this, but I'm an intellectual. I'm trying to establish a connection with you from within the intellectual role, which has no basis in the world of phenomena, has a zero political role and has taken the moral branch to the abyss. Because you, too, with your education, acquired manners and beliefs restructured in the modernity machine, form the other end of this connection. And we both wonder the same thing. How is it possible what's happening in Gaza?
It's no longer possible. It happened. That's today's word. We saw it. We're witnessing oppression. Jews who occupied the peak of innocence thanks to Levinas and the sense of responsibility are gone. If they ever existed. Contrary to Adorno's misunderstood maxim, poems will be written after Gaza, and these poems will actually represent civilization, not barbarism. As you know, Adorno was criticizing the culturalists, not those who wrote poetry after Auschwitz. Blaise Cendrars wrote that poem. Adorno said that the poem was barbaric because, in his eyes, culture and civilization had collapsed. The poet had to start over, in a way, from barbarism.
I don't think so. Although Adorno criticizes culture, in my opinion, he was both a product and an agent of that culture, as well as one of the people who reproduced it. Just like Noam Chomsky unintentionally reproduces the American system.
Gaza, the poet, the intellectual who aimlessly spins like a loose hoop, doesn't have such a connection with modernity. Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef can stand there. Husom Zomlot, the representative of the Palestinian Authority in the United Kingdom, can stand there. Especially the opponents of the Anglo-Saxon world can maintain that position. Determined anti-Zionist Jews like Ilan Pappé and Norman Finkelstein can stand there. But what does it matter? When the liberal discourse has collapsed to its foundations, any reaction, protests or lawsuits that can be made will have no meaning. Goodbye, modernity. Goodbye, humanism. Goodbye, freedom, human rights, democracy.
Events continue as long as human life is at stake. But history does not always continue. Because history is a network of ideas. Just as human life finds meaning in pain and pleasure, good and bad, if we know that we live as much as we feel, then history means the institutionalized attitudes of the human race toward events, not just a series of events.
Modern history ended on Oct. 7 in my opinion. Modernity means not only being in the present moment but also being in multiple moments at the same time. From now on, those on earth will not be able to experience the same moment. Nation-states react according to their own interests (which do not necessarily align with the interests of the majority of the population) in terms of politics, law, finance, trade and military. Despite not wanting to, the U.S. is supporting Israel's immoral, disproportionate, baseless war (with no possibility of achieving its ultimate goal of completely pacifying the population of Gaza). Otherwise, it cannot maintain its political system and may have to share control of the Eastern Mediterranean with powers like Russia or Türkiye. The unwilling cousins of the U.S., Canada and the U.K., are in the same situation. It is clear that this will not leave any historical or moral opportunity for the leading liberal warrior Anglo-Saxon states to reproduce. The nerve paralysis that began in Iraq and Afghanistan came to an end when the American discourse was completely paralyzed in the face of Israel's unlimited attacks on Gaza. The father-son Bushes not only declared Muslims as enemies of America instead of communists but also dragged the U.S. into a war that they could not win. The U.S. lacks the ability of colonialism; on the contrary, it is a British (formerly French, a little Spanish and a trace of Dutch) colonizer who has gained its freedom with the chance of history. How can you think of managing a structure consisting of 2 billion people and 50 states, along with Islam?
History is under the control of the ruling party in terms of discipline and discourse. After Gaza, there will be no ruling party. Americans call it "controlling the narrative." Despite mobilizing all their media, parliaments, schools, government officials, security forces and intelligence agencies on the issue of Gaza, they couldn't manage to keep the narrative under control. The balloons burst one by one, the cardboard was torn, the costumes were ripped; the play came to an end.
Francis Fukuyama was right about the end of history, but in reverse. As a liberal Western narrative, history completely stopped. Not a single word can be added. The "universal Western values" that we can call the spirit of that history, such as humanism, human rights, tolerance, freedom and democracy, mean no more than the American and Israeli flags that street protesters insult.
We don't yet know its meaning. Each constructed discourse is insufficient. But we know that Palestine, red, black, white, green, kufiyah, Gaza, Hamas, Abu Ubaida, Kassam and similar expressions imply something. We know that history and human morality will continue with this implied thing from now on. Barbarism, which is anti-culture, pre-civilization, is definitely not this. It is about reclaiming memory, breaking free from the cloud of lies surrounding the ancient, and emerging like the sun, revealing everything like itself.
Today, we stand in front of 2 million people who live with honor and die with dignity. No political evaluation means anything. Even if each of us were a part and our lives were built on what we think our interests are, national-state rhetoric is pointless. A nationalist discourse will not be enough to turn the wheel of history.
No intellectual stance, expression or word can mean anything. There is no meaning even in witnessing, taking sides or acknowledging the truth. It does not give us anything except being the lowest level of human beings. Responsibility and innocence, says Levinas. Except for being the lowest level of human beings, those of us outside of Gaza cannot even touch these values.
But we see. We understand. Allah gave us senses and reason for this. In my opinion, at this moment, we are not in a place above senses and judgment, where universal values exist, where humanity exists, where the international community exists. We are just witnessing what is happening as some kind of intelligent, but not yet formed beings. Our existence, our ability to construct history and our ability to be a community depend on the thoughts we will develop and the steps we will take from now on.
Today, we are not even real. Only Gaza and the people of Gaza are real. Only they are real.
*Freelance writer
